


Where the Chips Fell

by Purple_Converse



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-03-27 23:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Converse/pseuds/Purple_Converse
Summary: Where Steve never met Bucky in 1920s Brooklyn, only in dreams and visions/hallucinations of a life that could have been. They are both hardened and jagged but maybe one day something will even them out.A strange idea, for sure. Has it been eating at me for 3 months, definitely. Will I execute it successfully? WHO KNOWS? First posted fanfic, please bear with me.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Eventual Stucky, a tad OOC, maybe. To account for the fact that they never met, so they have drastically different personalities. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy. Leave kudos or a review.

Steve had always been the quiet type. From the moment he was born, barely mewling, to when he was fourteen, his jawbone breaking with the force of a fist, a quiet crack as he slumped against the dirt, refusing to let out a tear or a cry for help.  
His Ma never pried into why he was so quiet. Maybe she wasn't all that a good at offering words of comfort, being made of clay and cracked mud as she was. She often thought Steve got all the cracked parts of her soul, no one to fill ‘em in. 

But maybe one boy of dark hair and dark eyes, light never reaching their pooled depths. He ruled the world with scraped knuckles and bandaged knees, but his world was one small block of Brooklyn starting at the local bodega. Blood dripping out of his nose like tear drops, no one at his side. 

If you squinted and blinked and shifted the New York sun at the right angle, in that dusty light you could glimpse a skinny blond boy with bones that break far too easily and adoration in his eyes. But that was in a different universe, one that turns out differently but just as painfully. 

Bucky lived in brawls, no one too soften him out. Maybe that’s why he turned out the way he did. 

He shouldn't have.

Steve lived in blood and bruises and sickness, no one to hold his hand when he coughed. Maybe that’s why he fought so hard. 

He shouldn't have. 

They shouldn't have. But in this story, there is no they.


	2. The Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that delay! So sorry and please enjoy.

The way Bucky saw it, you're incomplete until you're not. Your internal compass spins and spins and never stops while you live your life, a gaping hole where that rib should've been. He'd seen it happen, that light flooding back into dead eyes, the first glimpse of that axis on which your world spins.

A teacher he'd once had in the third grade, when all the kids started giving him wary glances instead of asking him to play. She had those pretty smiles but the lonely eyes that go with, something always missing. Winifred Barnes would've called her a chipped puzzle piece if she were still alive.

One day, a man stepped through the door of her classroom, delivering much needed school supplies ( maybe he was more of an angel ) as she had been reading animatedly to the class.

When she looked at him, he stopped breathing, a gasp caught in his chest. When her eyes met his, something locked into place, missing puzzle piece be damned. Bucky knew right then she had found her missing rib, spinning compass whizzing to a stop on her true north.

He remembers hoping real hard they'd never let each other go.

Not like he did.

 

* * *

 

 

When Steve is nine years old, he thinks he can sees things. The first time he comes to this realization is the the third time a boy larger then him pummels his face into the dirt. He sees ( imagines ) a fist swinging into the boys face, a calloused and bruised hand to help him up. 

Instead, the blows continue to land, slicing his upper lip, bruising his left eye shut. The pain of the beating doesn't compared to the dull ache in his chest, as if he lost something important. Later, his momma furrows her brow and tries to remember what she forgot as she dabs at Steve's bloody upper lip. 

He hears laughter, one his heart tells him is familiar, but it isn't, its not, because he's never heard a laugh that makes him so happy. 

And maybe when a harsh wind blows and his featherlight body nearly topples, a firm hand on his shoulder keeps him steady and then he's ready to look up, maybe with love in his eyes, but no one is there, no one is ever there. 

Steve decides later on, after years of his heart skipping a beat as he catches glimpses of shaggy brown hair and then maybe a perfectly coiffed 'do, he resigns himself to the truth. He figures, somewhere along the line, that something that needed to happen never did, for a reason or another. 

And as he shivers alone in his post stamp appartement, he knows that now he can't help but to love a ghost. 


End file.
